The new Mega will kick off in the new year just before the brazen web tycoon, who lives in New Zealand, is due to appear at an extradition hearing that will determine whether or not he'll be flown out to the US to face charges of online piracy, fraud and money laundering.

Dotcom will protect his new site from the wrath of the US authorities by making it clear that the cloud service will not use American hosting companies, domains, internet providers or anything else with Uncle Sam's stamp on it, Reutersreported.

Users will be able to upload photos, music, films and other files, encrypt the data, and grant others access with unique decryption keys.

"In the past, securely storing and transferring confidential information required the installation of dedicated software. The new Mega encrypts and decrypts your data transparently in your browser, on the fly," the homepage for Mega explains. "You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us."

It is understood Mega's staff and owners want to ensure they cannot access the encrypted uploaded data in an attempt to absolve themselves of any responsibility for contents of the files. ®